


you, in focus

by pistolgrip



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Not Beta Read, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed, light yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25099480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pistolgrip/pseuds/pistolgrip
Summary: There are other ways to remedy a sleepless night other than tossing and turning.[happy 2020/07/06!]
Relationships: Siete | Seofon/Six | Seox (Granblue Fantasy)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	you, in focus

**Author's Note:**

> i have NO idea what’s up with the tone and past tense here, but the non-fic stuff i've been editing lately has been colouring my tone a lot so. oops !  
> happy july 6, 2020! sorry it's not the usual multichapter/longfic.
> 
> you know where to find me.

Siete knew how this arrangement started, but he didn’t know why it continued, knowing the kind of person Six was. If he were to go back in time to tell his past self that this arrangement existed, he would first laugh in his face before concluding that he himself were the one to have suggested it.

But no—here was Six. In his bed, dressed down for the night with his back pressed firmly against Siete’s flank to absorb his warmth, and sleeping more soundly than he has in apparent months, if he were to believe Six’s words.

(Six had a fantastic mask, but a terrible poker face without it. He needed another to lie for him, because he could never lie for himself.)

Siete adjusted as best as he could to that unexpected nightly routine; they were both light sleepers, but as Six was the one that approached him for help to begin with, Siete prioritized his rest over his own comfort. He would tried not to shift as Six settled in, became comfortable—because he would soon fall asleep briefly before another nightmare would fall upon him, during which Siete would wait it out to see if he needed to wake Six up.

This _observing_ he always did in secret. Not only because he felt strange for watching Six during his most vulnerable moments, but because, for all of Six’s annoyances with him, he would stop if he thought he was _truly_ inconveniencing Siete, and he was loathe to end the arrangement. He could already hear his muted words, deflecting the blame onto Siete while simultaneously taking it on himself—that Six’s own sleeplessness was endangering the rest of the Eternals because it left one of their mission leaders exhausted enough to make mistakes.

Siete needed to be careful. Without the moon’s light that night, it was all too easy to pretend.

* * *

_“Didn’t think you the type to get injured so easily!” Siete laughed as he supported Six’s weight with one hand, his sword ready in the other. At that time, Six didn’t even have the energy to snap back at him, and Siete filled the silence between them as he knew to._

_Before even applying the medicine, he noticed Six drifting off as he tended to his wounds. “Six,” he scolded, “have you not been sleeping lately?”_

_His words_ _slurred with the effort to keep his head up, exhaustion leaking out of his pores. His words, while lengthy, were normally clear and crisp with intention. “Nothing I do will keep the nightmares at bay.”_

_“Out of options? Counting sheep, all that?”_

_The pause that followed was unlike the sleep-filled pauses that came before. It was a deliberating pause, one that made Siete glance up to his masked face more than once while tightening his bandages, smiling at his hesitation. “Nightmares are not new to me. But as a child, that man”—Siete tried not to let his distaste show—“would keep me company._ _The most peaceful times of my life were with a warm hand on my shoulder or against my back as I slept.”_

_Fitting that the last thing Six has yet to try is to seek out company. “Any takers for nighttime companions?” Siete winked._

_“Not you,” Six sniffed and looked away._

_It was the answer he expected, and with another laugh, Siete dropped the topic with a joke about sewing him a stuffed toy. But when he stood up to turn the lights off so let Six rest his injuries, Six’s fingers closed around his wrist, keeping him in place._

* * *

They never talked about the arrangement in waking hours. The purpose of the arrangement would always be discussed as purely utilitarian. Even at night the sentiment carried, neither of them saying hardly a word to each other.

But no matter how much distance they kept between them, the fact of it was this: they had known each other for a long time, and there was hardly a point in pretending that Siete was only a warm body, a reminder of silent protection during the night, especially when Six still couldn’t sleep.

“Fireflies are kinda like stars, aren’t they?” Siete muttered. His window was open, and it was too stuffy a summer night to do anything but lie there. That night, the moon blinked out of existence to become new, and everything else on sky and land shone brighter in response, happy to take the stage for themselves before the next day would return its nascent glow.

“Siete,” Six grumbled, turned away from him as he always was. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“Like you have been for the last three hours?” He didn’t mean for an accusatory tone, but sleep deprivation coloured his drowsiness and weighed his question into the darkness.

Six’s breathing stopped for a brief moment before he expelled it in a sigh. He shifted, sitting up. “If this is your way of relaying to me that I have long overstayed my welcome—”

“I’m joking, but seriously. If you can’t sleep, then try to stay awake.”

The look Six pierced him with was ice-cold. (The moon had never disappeared that night. Siete caught it and hung it in his own room for it to glare at him.) “I never would have thought to stay awake if I couldn’t sleep,” Six said, unimpressed.

“I’m serious. We just do something else for a bit—”

“‘We’?”

“—twenty minutes, _tops_ , and then we try to sleep again.”

“‘ _We_ ’?” Six repeated.

“Yeah, we take a night walk.” He Siete knew that Six focusing on that part of the sentence already showed his biggest problem with it, but he charged on forward. “Fireflies? Stars? With the Star-Sword Sovereign? Sounds like a good night to me.”

When Six turned to face him again, he looked so unbelievably tired that Siete wanted to drop all façade—and then, Six spoke. “What choice do I have?” He rose, croaking to alertness, mind turning with resignation. “Tonight, the threat of your presence in the waking world is not enough to send me into sleep for escape.”

“You _wound_ me, really! I share my body heat free of charge, and you call me a menace in my own bed?”

“You’d be a menace everywhere.” Six crawled out of bed, throwing on his uniform shawl and the boots he left by Siete’s door. Once he put half of his mask on, he looked like a mismatched collection of all the histories that weighed on his shoulder, all the things he tried to flee in sleep.

“Wait, are you leaving without me? Six,” he whined, ignoring the way he became lightheaded when he stood up. The sleep deprivation piling up, but it was worth it to see the bags under Six’s eyes fade with time. (He’s too tired to deny it any longer that it was for anything else.)

Six waited for him as he put on socks and boots, and they stepped out into the balmy summer night. There was no moon to cast their path, only stars in the sky and stars above the soil, blooming lime-green as fireflies. It was slightly cooler outside than the afternoon heat trapped inside the base, and the blades of grass crunched under Siete’s boot, crisp and not yet damp with the dawn.

“Part of killing energy so you can sleep is walking around with me,” Siete teased, extending a hand and walking backwards. Six scoffed at the invitation, but he followed regardless, keeping his eyes elsewhere.

Truthfully, Siete felt as though he could lay down on the ground and fall asleep, at the mercy of any insect that had their habitat disturbed. He was tired, unbearably so. But still, he would interrupt Six’s thoughts to point out false constellations in the stars, to herd the fireflies somewhere together and make his own constellations on land.

When Six stifled a yawn, Siete gestured for them to step inside and try and sleep again. Six took his hand to support himself standing, and his grip was weak with fatigue.

“For future reference,” Siete mumbled, in time with the chirps of insects, “standing up and doing something else _calming_ for about twenty minutes is better than tossing and turning for those same twenty minutes.”

Six gave him a look that was long-suffering, as if he already _knew._ Of course he would. He would know better than Siete how energy courses through his body when he’s sleepless, gathering in his mind and scrambling his thoughts. “Of course I know. It’s just not often that I’m not alone.”

“You can bother me any time you want,” Siete offered, the stairs of their base creaking under every step. “I’m right there.”

Instead of returning to his room, Six followed behind him. It was then that Siete noticed how lethargic the short walk made Six, how the outside air drained his energy. It channelled out of him from firefly to firefly, from one nightlife song to another, anxious lightning following the path of least resistance until he was here again in Siete’s room.

Shucking off his boots, Six lay down on Siete’s bed and fell asleep before Siete could join him. A firefly drifted into Siete’s room, lost and blinking its distress signal, staccato like Siete’s heart.


End file.
